Code Lyoko
Code Lyoko redirects here. For other uses of the word, see Code Lyoko (disambiguation). Code Lyoko, is a French animated television series that utilizes normal animation as well as computer-generated imagery that this site is dedicated to giving information about. Sponsored by Antefilms and Moonscoop in association with France 3 and Canal J, Code Lyoko informs its viewers about the adventures of four children who take the task of defeating a diabolical computer upon themselves. They must enlist the help of a pink-haired virtual being to do so, and deal with various personality clashes with their classmates and teachers at a boarding school at the same time. Code Lyoko currently does not air with new episodes, but re-runs air on weekday mornings at 9:00 Eastern Standard Time. Sometimes two episodes may be shown consecutively, in the cases of season finales. The series was created by Thomas Romain and Tania Palumbo, and stars Barbara Weber-Scaff, David Gasman, Matthew Geczy, Mirabelle Kirkland, Jodi Forrest, and Sharon Mann. Each episode is approximately 26 minutes, with commercials, half an Earth hour. Now at the end of Season 4 and possibily the series, there are currently 97 episodes, counting two prequel episodes. Not all of them have been aired yet on television, but a few unaired episodes are avalible to watch at Cartoon Network's website. It was confirmed on the facebook page that Moonscope is currently producing 26 new episodes and it will be under the title of Code Lyoko: Evolution. Plot Code Lyoko tells the story of four junior-high boarding school students enrolled at Kadic Academy, Odd, Ulrich, Yumi, and Jeremie, who discover an artificial intelligence unit, Aelita, who is the sole inhabitant of a digital world known as Lyoko. An evil program of the Supercomputer that houses Lyoko, XANA, plots for reasons unknown on taking over our fair planet. XANA attacks Earth by using Towers to hack into electronic devices, possess objects, or take control of nonsentient organisms. Our four heroes must then escort Aelita to the said Tower, where she deactivates it, and saves humanity in the process. XANA develops many different strategies to try and kill our heroes, such as making them listen to music that makes people go into a coma and die, imprisoning them within Lyoko, putting them inside a semi-functional virtual world that looks like Earth, and trying to send two trains carrying poisonous chemicals at each other, and various other schemes. During this time the main characters deal with their school lives, fall in love, become rivals, yell at each other, go crazy, and generally deal with their split lives. In the first season, not much was known about XANA and the history of Lyoko. XANA usually possessed objects like teddy bears and rats. Team Lyoko usually discovered the attack, went to the Factory, and Aelita typed in the code at the last moment before someone would have died. In the episode Code: Earth, Aelita was finally materialized, and the show took on a new story-telling style. Although the episode sequences stayed the same, many of the episodes were built on each other, thus not viewing them in the correct order would lead to confusion. The second season also expanded on the characters' personalities, desires, etc. as well as on the creation of Lyoko and such. A new sector, Carthage, was added, and new characters, such as William and the mysterious Franz Hopper, came into the scene. In the season finale of the second season, most of the secrets of the Supercomputer and such were revealed. It turned out that Aelita was human and Hopper was her father, and he had created Lyoko and XANA to destroy Project Carthage, some sort of military operation years ahead of its time. Characters Main Article: List of characters As one would expect, their are various characters in the show, as it is a show. According to codelyoko.com, the story centers around six humans, Jeremie, Aelita, Odd, Ulrich, Yumi, William, and the antagonist, XANA. Of course, there are various secondary characters worth mentioning, such as Sissi, Herb, Jim, Nicholas, Milly, Tamiya and various background characters who also provide interesting plot twists, such as Emily, Taelia and Samantha. Seasons Four seasons of Code Lyoko have been broadcasted. The fourth season ended on France 3 in November 2007. On Cartoon Network it will be finished on some unknown date, although Cartoon Network is currently showing some of the last episodes on its website before they are broadcast. First season The first season of the show has very little plot development. The only major plot developments are made in the two-part finale. The rest of the episodes are mostly filler. Until the finale, each episode consists of the group discovering an attack, stopping the attack, and resetting time to cover it up. Other sub-plots are included, such as their relationships with one another and other students and teachers at the school. Usually the interaction with their classmates and teachers early in each episode contributes to Xana's attack. Throughout these events, Jeremie works on a program to materialize Aelita in order to shut down the supercomputer safely. He eventually develops the program in the two-part finale, but Xana takes measures to keep Aelita linked to the supercomputer, preventing the group from shutting it down without killing her in the process. Second season The second season, in contrast to the first, is much more plot-focused, though a decent portion of the episodes are still filler. The animation is more realistic and detailed, and Jim and Sissi's personalities have changed significantly, though some traces of their old personalities exist in some form. Aelita lives on Earth in the second season. In the first episode of the second season, she enrolls at Kadic under the name of Aelita Stones. She poses as a cousin of Odd, using a forged birth certificate created by Jeremie. Jeremie's new super scan program also means that Aelita doesn't need to stay on Lyoko to check for Xana's activity. Aelita also begins having visions of a life she supposedly never lived, and a man named Franz Hopper is shown to have connections to Lyoko. Also adding to the group's troubles is a new student named William Dunbar, who has begun to take an interest in Yumi. Each member of the group now has vehicles to quickly transport them in Lyoko: Odd gets a hover skateboard called an "Overboard," Ulrich gets a one-wheeled motorcycle called an "Overbike," and Yumi gets a hover scooter called an "Overwing." Aelita can ride any vehicle by herself if necessary, but usually rides with another person. A fifth sector, Carthage, is discovered in Lyoko and turns out to be Xana's home sector, from which all of his data can be accessed, so the group goes on several journeys into this sector to do so. At the same time, Xana begins sending the Scyphozoa after Aelita to steal her memories, and has created three other new monsters, as well. The operations of the supercomputer are also somewhat demystified. Return trips are fewer (though still common) now, because it makes Xana stronger. Eventually, Xana's true purpose is revealed, as are the origins of the supercomputer, Lyoko, and Aelita herself. Third season In the third season, Xana has been strangely quiet in both the real world and Lyoko, having done nothing during the group's summer vacation. It still needs a computer to exist, but is no longer limited to a specific one, instead being free to roam the internet at will. Jeremie has developed a new scanning program capable of tracking Xana, which reveals that Xana appears to be residing in the United States, but lacks the means to strike against Xana. Jeremie's current goal at the moment is to find a way to transfer the group into the internet. Because Aelita had her memories returned by Franz Hopper, she can be devirtualized normally. She even has a new power to defend herself with in Lyoko shooting energy blasts from her hand's which she and Jeremie call,an Energy Field. Also, Yumi has decided against having a relationship with Ulrich, preferring to remain just friends. In Carthage, the group finds Lyoko's core, which Xana wants destroyed. Being free of the supercomputer, Xana's attacks are far more powerful. Tower activation is still required to initiate them, but Xana can perform attacks on levels far beyond what he could when imprisoned. Xana can possess mass numbers of people at once, making it that much more difficult for the group to make their way from the school to the factory. In the hopes of isolating the group from Carthage, since destroying Lyoko directly would prove difficult, Xana has turned his sights to Lyoko's sectors, hoping to remove their ability to access Carthage by deleting the sectors they use to get there. By using the Scyphozoa to possess Aelita, Xana can use her to enter the code "Xana" in a passage tower. This gives Xana full access to the sector, after which he can delete it. Despite their best efforts, Xana eventually succeeds in deleting all four sectors. Luckily, Jeremie finds a way to access Carthage directly. Seeing that their numbers aren't enough against Xana's increasing power, the group decides to add William Dunbar to the team to balance things out. This proves to be a disastrous mistake, however, as during William's first trip to Lyoko, Xana uses the Scyphozoa to possess him. Using William, Xana is easily able to overpower the other Lyoko warriors and destroy Lyoko's core. The act renders the supercomputer useless. Within the empty supercomputer, William transforms into a dark version of himself, now possessed by Xana to an even greater degree. Afterwards, Jeremie gets a coded message from the internet from none other than Franz Hopper, who somehow survived the destruction of Lyoko. Fourth season In the fourth season, Lyoko is recreated, allowing the group to continue tracking Xana. Traveling into the digital sea in Jeremie's latest creation, a submersible ship called the Skidbladnir, the group finds a number of "Replikas", which are single-sector recreations of Lyoko. Each of these Replikas is controlled by another supercomputer, which is in turn controlled by Xana. To stop Xana once and for all, Jeremie devises a way to materialize his friends at the site of these supercomputers with their Lyoko abilities intact, giving them the necessary firepower to dismantle them, all while continuing to battle the evil William. The group has new outfits and weapons to accompany the new season. William is controlled by Xana, and acts as a barrier in Lyoko, the Digital Sea, and the Replikas. He is eventually freed, and in the second-to-last episode, Franz Hopper gives up his life to help in stopping Xana. Xana is defeated, and the group finally turns off the supercomputer. Movies The early theatrical trailer of the unreleased film was released by 20th Century Fox and Antefilms Pictures. In place of a fifth season, Moonscoop is planning to create three animated films at a length of 70 minutes each. It is unknown if they will ever go through with this idea. DVDs Main Article: List of DVDs So far, six DVD volumes have been released in the United States alone. The first three are XANA Unleashed, Movies, Music, and Mayhem and XANA Possessed. They each contain 4 to 5 episodes from the first season, with the fifth being stated as a "special episode", with redone sound and updated animation, etc. The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons, Volume 1&2 have also been released. They are all released by Funimation. XANA Attacks have yet to be released. Books Main Article: List of Books There is a Book series of comic books currently beeing produced by Moonscoop that depict the adventures of Team Lyoko with screenshots of the episodes. The book series misspells the names of the characters often, like saying Jeremie is spelled Jeremy and Sissi, Sissy. They also misspelled the name of an episode; they said Teddygozilla was spelled Teddy-godzilla. They are all paperback. Controversies Main Article: List of controversies Since its arrival, Code Lyoko has received mixed feedback. While it achieves moderate ratings as a result of being on Cartoon Network, and has a large amount of fans, some say the episodes in the first season are redundant, and that the attempted romance between teenagers is unrealistic and therefore a failed attempt at a soap opera. However, many say its blend of different genres, including Action/Adventure, Romance, and a little hint of Drama, makes the show an excellent view. Also, some criticize the size of the kids' heads is far too large. Awards Code Lyoko's status of being France's currently most popular animation internationally was given official recognition in December 2006, when it won France's prestigious Prix de l'Export 2006 Award for Animation.http://www.moonscoop.com/actualite35-uk.html The French fans gave the show their stamp of approval when they voted it no. 1 show on the Canal J website. Category:Code: LYOKO